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The
U-S Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing yesterday (Wednesday) on recent
Supreme Court decisions that have favored big business in cases of corporate
misconduct.

The
hearing included testimony from fisherman Osa Schultz of Cordova on the ruling
last month limiting punitive damages in the Exxon Valdez oil spill case.
Schultz told the committee it would be easy to assume 19-and-a-half years after
the spill that Exxon had cleaned up the mess and paid for all of the damages.
Nothing could be further from the truth, she said.

(Judiciary
1:30s“…David
to their Goliath.”)

Schultz
went on to describe how the fishing co-op that she and her husband belonged to
went bankrupt as a result of the spill, and said there were countless others in
Alaska with stories just like theirs. And she became emotional when she said
that the high court sent the wrong message to corporations in setting a
one-to-one ration between compensatory and punitive damages.

Leahy
says recent decisions made by the court have concerned him enough to hold other
hearings. But he says Congress probably won’t overturn any aspect of the
Supreme Court’s Exxon ruling, or censure members of the court as some in Alaska
have suggested.